Girl Gone Nova

by Pauline Baird Jones

  Lorin shouted his delight. One of the small wheeled things crossed a line, and Relsten whooped in a way Hel hadn’t heard since the boys’ mother died.

  “I won, Doc! Did you see that?”

  “Way to go, Relsten! Come on, Lorin, let’s take second for the red team. That’s it, that’s it. Yes!”

  “First and second. You guys rock!” She held up her fist and bumped it first against Relsten’s small fist, then against Lorin’s smaller fist. “Now we do the victory dance.”

  All three of them jumped up and did a bizarre dance without music that involved hips shaking and fingers pointing up at the ceiling, then at the ground. Delilah didn’t see him until she’d done a full circle of her victory dance.

  “Oh.” She stopped, color surging into her pale face. She tried to look sober, but the color in her face and the glow of her eyes gave her away.

  His sons saw him, squealed in ways most unlike their usual greeting and hurled themselves at him. With a son wrapped around both legs, they both talked at once about winning and these shell things that exploded and banana peels. He should scold them for wandering away, but they were happier than he’d seen them in a long time. He would, he realized, have been disappointed if they hadn’t wandered off. He’d wandered off all the time as a boy. It was what boys did.

  “That’s,” he had to swallow back something in his throat, “that’s very pleasing, my sons.” Two small fists were presented. Delilah mimed bumping for him. It felt awkward, but his sons looked pleased. Lorin wanted him to victory dance with them.

  “I was not a partner in the victory,” he pointed out. “I have not earned a victory dance.” Thanks be to the gods for that.

  “We can show you how to win, too, Father,” Relsten told him, his tone sympathetic and just a bit patronizing. Hel saw Delilah bite her lip to keep back a smile.

  “They are very like you.”

  Unsure if he were being complimented or teased, Hel looked at the screen and the bizarre creatures pictured on it and felt a fear he hadn’t felt—he tried to find a comparable moment and failed. He sent a look that might have been of entreaty to Delilah. Her gaze was kind, but her lips twitched.

  “So, I’m guessing you don’t have anything like this on your planet?”

  “No.” Hel knew he sounded forceful. He felt forceful. They had nothing like this in their galaxy, thank goodness. “What is the point of it?”

  “It’s a game. Surely your children play games?”

  “Of course they play games.”

  “Nothing this fun, Father!” Lorin looked delighted.

  Delilah looked guilty. “It’s the novelty factor. Our children would probably think your games are awesome.”

  “It’s awesome, Father.” Their voices joined together to explain the complexities of the game. Their delight in mayhem shocked him—until he remembered how bloodthirsty he’d been at that age. It hadn’t been that long. Perhaps he was still feeling the effects of the blast. He felt a bit dizzy.

  “That one looks quite pleasant,” he added, as a ribbon of many colors popped up.

  “It’s brutal,” Lorin said.

  Hel didn’t know he knew that word.

  “It is a bit dark,” Delilah admitted, “but in a really cool way.”

  “Cool,” Relsten echoed her and Lorin echoed him.

  Hel could see them filing the word away for future use. This enlargement in their vocabulary was sure to displease his mother. He smiled at the thought.

  “Can we stay and play, Father?”

  Lorin raised a face filled with entreaty. Relsten’s matched it. What surprised him was that Delilah had the same look of anxious hope on her face.

  “Doc says we may go to Mario’s Party.”

  His sons called her Doc. He should say something, but what? His brow arched. “A party?”

  “It’s a different game,” Delilah explained. “I’ve never had anyone to play it with. I’d love it if they could stay.”

  “Your work—”

  She looked at her watch. “I’m off for a few more hours.”

  This was a new aspect of her personality and one that shaved off years. She looked…lighter, as if she’d shrugged off a weight of some kind.

  “You could play, too, Father,” Relsten said. “Doc has four controllers.”

  Why had none of her friends played with her? He almost asked, but he recalled the malicious tone to the voice that had called her “Morticia.” A nickname, she’d explained, but not an affectionate one, he now concluded. She lived on a ship teeming with people, but she seemed as isolated as he was as Leader. Again there was that moment of clarity, of knowing her and who she was at her very core, of feeling connected in a way that had never happened before.

  “It’s very kind of you to play with my sons,” he said. Before he’d finished the sentence his sons were doing the victory dance again. They lacked Delilah’s sensual fluidity, but made up for that in enthusiasm. She didn’t look dangerous, not like she’d looked at the party, but Hel knew it was misleading. She was still dangerous, just not in the way he’d expected when he saw her across the crowded reception hall.

  She had to know who he was, what he’d done two years ago, had to know why the General disliked him so fiercely, but when he looked at her he felt no judgment. Even from his mate, from his children’s mother he hadn’t felt this level of acceptance—an acceptance that seemed to be without condition.

  It was as intriguing as her pink mouth and passion purple eyes.

  Looking at her, he knew something else. Whatever reason brought her to the reception, it was not by the General’s design. There were many things that puzzled him about these people, but this he felt in his core.

  Delilah was the last woman on this ship the General would want him to meet.

  * * * * *

  Doc was as sorry to see Relsten and Lorin leave as they were to go. Her office felt empty without the two boys, but their departure left some stuff for her brain to chew on. That made her brain happy. She’d been careful how she pumped them for information, not liking herself very much as she did it. They’d liked her, accepted her in ways that she’d never experienced. If she could have found another way—but there wasn’t or she’d have already found it.

  Hel would talk to his sons and find out what she’d done. He wouldn’t be surprised, but would he understand? He was at least as ruthless as she was, but she’d used his boys, traded Earth slang for Gadi words. He might not forgive that. If she had children—which she never would—how would she feel about what she’d done? She hadn’t hurt them, but she had picked their brains, used their innocence against them.

  She could wrap it up in all sorts of comforting rationalizations, but it still smelled. She’d never cared what anyone thought about her, well, except for her brother and her microscopic—and somewhat recently acquired—circle of friends. She’d loved her parents, but detachment pretty much defined their relationship. It didn’t help that they had no clue what forces they’d unleashed on their children with their desire to pass on their IQs and DNA. She’d learned early not to care what they thought, aware that most of their thoughts weren’t about her anyway. Robert had dominated the landscape of all their lives, even after his fall. By the time they realized they had another child, it was too late for them to be anything but acquaintances.

  Hel seemed awkward with his boys, but there was love and caring bubbling below the surface. They must look like their mother. She’d have been beautiful. He missed her. Doc heard it in his voice when he talked about her, felt him missing her in the subtext of his words. A strange sensation tightened her chest. She had no experience, no parallel in her past to identify the feeling. She rubbed the spot, which didn’t help, and focused on the inputting what she’d learned from the boys.

  After a time, as she ran the translation program she’d created, the tightness lessened, though it failed to disappear. The Gadi patients had talked freely, confident that none of the expedition spoke the language.
There was a saying that eavesdroppers never heard good about themselves. What they were saying pretty much proved the saying. Kind of crappy of them, considering they were getting free medical care aboard the Doolittle.

  This research was not part of her mission objective, but if they lost the outpost before she got there, her mission objective became moot. She frowned as her mission brief bubbled back to the top of her thoughts. Doc was a scientist, but her skill set was both broad and narrow. Usually her missions involved science and guys with guns. She went places where geeks were required but feared to go. Her mission on the Nimitz had fit her deployment criteria. The expedition still controlled the outpost, so she shouldn’t have to shoot her way to whatever it was the Major wanted her to do in this galaxy unless they lost the outpost.

  That might explain her presence, if the head of the expedition, General Halliwell knew they might lose the outpost, but she’d found no sign anyone knew their control was at risk when she browsed through the Doolittle’s computers. She didn’t know what was in the General’s head, but would he have gone to a party if war were about to break out? Would he have entered Gadi space? The Gadi had more ships in the galaxy and even with hyperdrive capability they were too far from Kikk and the only other Earth ship in many millions of light years.

  If the Gadi launched an attack to take back the outpost, they’d take it. Even with help from the outpost defenses, the expedition would be forced to withdraw from the galaxy or be destroyed. Doc was surprised the Gadi hadn’t already taken it back. Hel hadn’t indicated this level of patience in his past dealings with the expedition. Doc could think of one reason for it—the Key.

  Doc probably knew more about the Key than anyone but the Key, so it was a shock to realize the official record listed the Key as a device. Only one person could have buried the information that deep, which made the upright General Halliwell at least as devious as the Major and brought her back to her question: How could the General not know how close they were to war with the Gadi?

  She wasn’t here to advise him, but he needed to know. And he needed to find out who wasn’t telling him what he needed to know.

  But would he believe her?

  * * * * *

  Doc finished her shift without finding an opportunity to talk to the General, at least not one that wouldn’t draw unwelcome attention to the meeting. So far she’d managed to stay under the radar of whoever was gooning up the process, and she intended to stay there until it was time to act. On the upside, she’d found something to do while she waited to find out more about her mission on Kikk. If she could serve up the traitors, it might help her mitigate the downside of spilling what she’d learned to the General. The General wasn’t going to like what she had to say. The war would probably happen whether he believed her or not, but if she could delay the inevitable, she might have a shot at completing her mission.

  This wasn’t about Hel and his odd effect on her. With or without a war, she wouldn’t be paying a house call. She didn’t plan on doing—she couldn’t do whatever it was he wanted to do. If he wanted to do something. Which he probably didn’t. If part of her wished he did want to do something, then it should stop it. It couldn’t happen. This wasn’t just a different way to say potato. They were from different freaking galaxies. And that was before she added in all of her baggage and his.

  She should get some shut-eye, but she couldn’t sleep. Too much noise inside her head, too much data to sort through. Her thoughts were chaotic, her worries too pointed, and they were too close for sleep. She needed movement. She needed focus. The right words were there. She just hadn’t thought of them yet. She pushed her primary problem to the back burner. Her mind knew it, hated it, and would work furiously on the problem in the background, eventually assembling the pieces she needed into the right configuration.

  That left a lot of stuff for the front burner. If the prospect of war with the Gadi weren’t huge, she’d have saved the back burner for Hel. What he did to her was unsettling in a way unprecedented in her experience. It was as if he had the pin number that brought down her defenses. He walked into a room and she turned, not just into a girl, but into a real girl. Doc had been many things in her life, but she’d never been that. Even as a child, she’d just been a short adult who calculated everything.

  The curious part of her found it interesting in a disturbing way. How weird was it to have a piece of brain enjoying watching the rest of her squirm?

  And most of her was dying to kiss him, seriously dying for it. It hadn’t interfered with her concentration yet, because she was at her best when multi-tasking, but deep inside she wasn’t sure she could keep all those balls in the air when one of them was obsessed with a kiss. And what would happen if she got what she wanted? That scared her as much as the thought of not getting it.

  The only way she knew to deal with it all was to get active, wear her body down to the point where exhaustion took down her brain. She was reaching for her iPod when Briggs strolled in the ship’s gym. He was a big man with an imperfectly squared face. His skin was reddened by his years in the sun and his hair had been cropped to the point of near invisibility. His gaze had a piercing quality that made her feel like he saw all her secrets. If he did, they hadn’t scared him off.

  The retired Sergeant Major was the closest thing Doc had to a friend on the Doolittle. Sara, Doc’s only other friend in several galaxies, had introduced the pair not long before Doc had been deployed on the Nimitz. While the friendship with Briggs had been orchestrated by Sara, the friendship with Sara was accidental. Doc happened to be there when Sara went into labor. Doc had no experience with friends, so it took her a while to figure out what was happening. She wasn’t an easy person to befriend, but Sara didn’t know how to quit. Doc trusted her more than anyone and that included the Major. Not that she trusted the Major. That would be stupid.

  The trust between her and Sara was mutual and a surprise. Doc was, she knew, one of a handful of people who knew Sara’s story. And Sara, and her husband Fyn, were the only ones who knew Doc knew. Doc didn’t know what Briggs knew about her or Sara. The truly weird part: she didn’t mind.

  “Haven’t seen you for a few days,” the laconic Briggs said, looking her over as if it had been longer than a few days.

  Doc half expected him to tell her she looked like hell, but he didn’t. He never did what she expected.

  “I’ve been helping out in the infirmary.” He probably knew that already. There wasn’t much that went on that Briggs didn’t know.

  “Then you probably need a workout.”

  “I do,” Doc agreed. She docked her iPod and selected “their” play list. Dancing with Briggs even made them tired. And it was fun, a benefit missing from most other aspects of her life.

  * * * * *

  After a quick shower, Doc headed for her office to check her email. An update was due through the communication array. Maybe she’d received something more from the Major. By this time he’d know the Doolittle had detoured to the Gadi home world. Surely he’d have a comment on that. He had a comment on everything, even if it was just one word.

  Doc opened her door, her hand going to the light switch, but before she could flip it, she sensed a presence. Doc froze, her whole body poised to spring, every cell abruptly, lethally online.

  “I was hoping you’d come back before I had to leave,” Hel said.

  Her heart pounded with adrenaline that had no place to be expended. She’d have bet money that her workout with Briggs had left her with nothing but a butt load of tired. And she’d have lost.

  “I’m sorry. I was working out.” Her voice was thin with the strain of keeping herself in check.

  “I startled you.”

  Startled? “A bit.” She uncurled her fingers and flexed them. The fading adrenaline left a series of tremors in the wake of its retreat. She needed to do something or she’d explode. And then he was so close she could feel his body heat, could see the glint of his eyes in the dark.

  “I am
sorry.”

  Was he sorry? He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded, well, not sorry. She wasn’t sorry either. In the dark she wasn’t Doc or Delilah or the Major’s creature. She was a girl wanting to kiss a guy, if she could figure out how to make it happen. The Major hadn’t covered kissing in her training. Doc didn’t know if he sensed her thoughts or just heard her breathing pick up. Maybe he was just a guy doing what guys did with a girl. His hand, warm and strong and big, slid along the side of her neck, cupping her nape. This cause had the effect of tilting her head to the side just enough to be encouraging. That it was also the right angle for kissing was an added benefit and one he took advantage of, though he didn’t rush it.

  His lips brushed across one eyelid, then the other, found the tip of her nose and stroked across each cheek. Part of her wanted him to hurry, but most of her was lost in mind-reeling sensation. She thought she knew chemistry, understood biology, the mechanics of attraction, but this wasn’t mechanical or scientific.

  She didn’t understand it, didn’t want to study it. It was enough to feel.

  His mouth finding hers was a shock and a shocking pleasure. No amount of study had prepared her for this, her first kiss. His mouth was warm, his lips firm and gentle, confident and inviting. There was taste and texture and magic. Lots and lots of magic for a girl who didn’t believe in magic.

  The smell of him so close made her head spin. She found his shoulders, gripped with her hands and that helped anchor her in a moment that felt a bit like slow dancing. His other hand found its way to her waist. They flowed together, as if to music, her hands sliding up his shoulders and into his hair, as his mouth stopped teasing and settled onto hers with confident authority.

  So this was hugging.

  So this was kissing.

  She’d read the books, the poetry, seen and studied the science and none of it had prepared her for the reality of being held and wanted by a man. To feel safe and not safe, to feel powerful and out of control. A wonderful insanity that explained everything and nothing.